I know that I have been remiss in writing an entry… I usually don’t take this long a break from writing, but I have been trying to get some things accomplished before my daughter comes home for her Thanksgiving break. She’ll be home for only two full days, and then will be going back to Cambridge for the remainder of the semester. I have a lot to get done before she arrives.

I thought that I would quickly “check in” and mention that I am continuing to make my way through my holiday themed mystery books. I enjoyed the first of the Special Pennyfoot Country Club mysteries (by Kate Kingsbury) and am reading a “Jessica Fletcher” (Donald Bain) holiday mystery right now. As I have mentioned before, I am becoming a rather slow reader, so I am hoping that I will be able to make it through a couple other holiday mysteries before our calendars change to 2010. (Can you believe it’s been ten years since all of that hub-bub about our computers not being able to change from the 1900s to the 2000s?!?)

How about you all? What are you reading? Drop us a line if you wouldn’t mind telling us about your current book… even if you’re not reading a mystery!

I was just browsing through a few of the alphabetical pages on the Cozy Mystery site, and was somewhat surprised at what I found. A few years ago, when I started the site, I (apparently!) didn’t add any information for some (as in “quite a few”) of the authors.

I cannot believe that the very popular Donna Andrews has this description: “One of her series involves a blacksmith theme (the Meg Lanslow series)…” OR >>> How about what I have listed for the wildly popular Mignon F. Ballard >>> “Her series features a guardian angel… Augusta Goodnight”…  Hmmmm…..

Those “blurbs” are embarrassing to me! VERY embarrassing! What was I thinking about when I wrote those?!?!? Is that really the best I could do?!?

So, I have decided that I will slowly make my way through the mystery book authors’ alphabetical pages and try to remedy this problem of mine… I am going to try to update some of the authors whose descriptions are paltry. I will try to include something about the author’s “previous life”… other than the very obvious “I always wanted to be an author” type of information. Something that might give the prospective reader an inkling as to why the author ended up writing the types of books he/she does. Maybe a great gourmet is now writing a culinary mystery book theme series, or an ex-lawyer is writing a legal thriller series (à la John Grisham.)

This is not to say that I am going to change all of the “descriptions” of all of the authors. Take, for example, one of the blurbs that I would like to use as an example of what all of the blurbs should be: “Sharon Wildwind served as an army nurse in Vietnam and now writes a series featuring ‘Pepper’ Pepperhawk, a nurse returning from Vietnam.”

Ok, ok, I know I didn’t do a phenomenally great job with the above example, but it does provide a nice starting place for someone who is looking for a new mystery book author to read.

I love the ease of cell phones! Let me state that before I continue with this rant… I love having almost an unlimited amount of long-distance time. I love having access to all sorts of places when I am at all sorts of places.

BUT>>>>

I do not dial my cell phone (or even hold it!!!) while I’m driving. I grew up not being able to make phone calls while on the road – so it is simply a habit I don’t plan to acquire. When my children were young, whenever we were in the car tooting around, we found fun things to do. The “We Sing” tapes were permanently left in the car. When we weren’t singing along with the Wee Sing gang, we played games: rhyming (à la mat-cat-rat), Is it bigger than a breadbox?, simple math, I Spy, the alphabet-finding game, ETC.  Which brings me to my next point…

I remember the first time I was aware that some cars actually have television sets installed in them. What?!? Yep, that’s right! That was my initial response, and I am still wondering WHAT?!?

More and more, I am noticing something that rivals the television and DVD hook-ups in cars>>> Parents on their cell phones with their little tykes in the car!!! Are the parents lives so busy that the only time they can find to make appointments or catch up with family/friends is while they are in their cars with their tots?

Hopefully, when these same cell-phoning parents’ children are twelve years old, the parents can look back fondly and remember what their friends/family had to say during all of those car rides with their children! As Harry Chapin would say: The cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon…